I ordered an S350 4 years ago.
After one year and some adjustments of gearbox the car completely lost its ability to keep its even height from the ground on all four wheels and keep the heights in Sport, Comfort and Eco mode.
The height is measured either from a centre of a wheel to a wheel arch or from a bottom end of a disk to a wheel arch.
The rear passenger wheel was 3 centimetres higher than the left rear passenger wheel. The front wheels discrepancy was around 1 centimetre.
The car stopped going down in the Sport mode and its height was as in the Comfort mode; it just looked as a Land Rover or a tractor.
Three MB dealerships had attempted to tackle this issue, well, this problem in the last 3 years.
From my own experience I do see that either mechanics do not know what they do or they just do not want to do their job.
I come to a dealership, describes the problem, the car is taken for repairs and the next day I have a phone call that it is ready for collection. Even without measuring the height of the car I clearly see that it is still an army jeep, not a MB S350. And a service advisor explains me that everything is done with the car, the computer scan reading says that the car is perfect, no fault codes whatsoever. I invite the service advisor to measure the car’s height, we measure the height, and the difference between the left and right rears is 3.4cm. The service advisor calls a mechanic. He duly comes and shows me the scan papers and explains that everything is fine with the car and the computer scan confirms this. “But the rear height differs by 3.4cm” I tell him. And he answers that nothing could be done here because the scan confirms that everything is OK so there is no reason to do any repairs because there is nothing to repair. I am just speechless.
A similar situation is in the second dealership. The third dealership did mend the problem a bit, the height difference was reduced to only 2 centimetres yet in the Sport mode the car did not go down as much as it did in the first year and in 2 months it stopped going down in the Sport mode again.
Went back to dealership and told them either to repair properly or to send the car to be repaired in Germany – they manufactured it there so they must repair it. The dealership contacted the MB technical team, they sent here some device that MB dealership did NOT have in their workshop at all and they finally managed to do the rear height difference to 7millimetres. The car does go down in the Sport mode – I will see how long this will last.
Thus, to summarize my experience: MB UK does not know how to tackle this problem whatsoever. It is just a fact based on 3 different MB official dealership repair attempts. MB cannot make a car to be even. MB technicians basically tell customers that it is fine, there is no problem and a car should be like this. I see that many MB owners even do not understand that they have this problem since many of them constantly use a Comfort mode and never change for the Sport or the Eco modes.
I started to pay attention to all MBs I see on the road and the overwhelming majority of them are raised and do look like tractors. This only confirms that their owners are unaware of this issue.
After one year and some adjustments of gearbox the car completely lost its ability to keep its even height from the ground on all four wheels and keep the heights in Sport, Comfort and Eco mode.
The height is measured either from a centre of a wheel to a wheel arch or from a bottom end of a disk to a wheel arch.
The rear passenger wheel was 3 centimetres higher than the left rear passenger wheel. The front wheels discrepancy was around 1 centimetre.
The car stopped going down in the Sport mode and its height was as in the Comfort mode; it just looked as a Land Rover or a tractor.
Three MB dealerships had attempted to tackle this issue, well, this problem in the last 3 years.
From my own experience I do see that either mechanics do not know what they do or they just do not want to do their job.
I come to a dealership, describes the problem, the car is taken for repairs and the next day I have a phone call that it is ready for collection. Even without measuring the height of the car I clearly see that it is still an army jeep, not a MB S350. And a service advisor explains me that everything is done with the car, the computer scan reading says that the car is perfect, no fault codes whatsoever. I invite the service advisor to measure the car’s height, we measure the height, and the difference between the left and right rears is 3.4cm. The service advisor calls a mechanic. He duly comes and shows me the scan papers and explains that everything is fine with the car and the computer scan confirms this. “But the rear height differs by 3.4cm” I tell him. And he answers that nothing could be done here because the scan confirms that everything is OK so there is no reason to do any repairs because there is nothing to repair. I am just speechless.
A similar situation is in the second dealership. The third dealership did mend the problem a bit, the height difference was reduced to only 2 centimetres yet in the Sport mode the car did not go down as much as it did in the first year and in 2 months it stopped going down in the Sport mode again.
Went back to dealership and told them either to repair properly or to send the car to be repaired in Germany – they manufactured it there so they must repair it. The dealership contacted the MB technical team, they sent here some device that MB dealership did NOT have in their workshop at all and they finally managed to do the rear height difference to 7millimetres. The car does go down in the Sport mode – I will see how long this will last.
Thus, to summarize my experience: MB UK does not know how to tackle this problem whatsoever. It is just a fact based on 3 different MB official dealership repair attempts. MB cannot make a car to be even. MB technicians basically tell customers that it is fine, there is no problem and a car should be like this. I see that many MB owners even do not understand that they have this problem since many of them constantly use a Comfort mode and never change for the Sport or the Eco modes.
I started to pay attention to all MBs I see on the road and the overwhelming majority of them are raised and do look like tractors. This only confirms that their owners are unaware of this issue.
